Meeting Abstract
Most animals undergo substantial changes in body size and morphology during ontogeny that can influence many aspects of ecological performance. For example, body size variation can strongly influence predator-prey interactions and drive patterns of size structure in prey populations and strongly influence long-term population dynamics and community structure. Predator consumption rates are commonly unimodal functions of prey size. Prey may therefore pass through windows of vulnerability to size specific predators as they grow through ontogeny. Prey growth rates can therefore be strong determinants of prey survival probability. Prey growth rates are in turn driven by resource availability. Consequently, resources may impose bottom up control on the outcome of size structured predator-prey interactions. I will present experimental and simulation results demonstrating how prey growth and resource availability affects the interactions between red-eyed tree frog tadpoles and two different size-limited predators–dragonfly nymphs and giant water bugs.
